Tag: celebrities

You know a person has touched people deeply and often – by using the gifts they were born with – when the mediasphere suddenly stops and almost universally covers that person’s death… regardless of how tragically meaningless said death was.

Even the White House made a statement in regards to Robin William’s death.

When Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton eventually O.D. from whatever party drugs are in vogue at the moment, sure the media will blurb about it over the course of the day, but people will collectively shrug while TMZ treats is like a national emergency.

I’m sad that such a vibrant and often brilliant man had come to a point in his life where he thought there was no other escape but through the veil to whatever exists after this mortal coil – but in some ways, I don’t think there could have been any other outcome to Robin’s life: when a person has such a manic and larger-than-life energy, you could hardly imagine the depths of the inevitable lows when all the laughter ran out.

In our daily lives, there are certain universal constants that we all assume will be there the next morning after we go to sleep – and the presumption that Robin Williams would always be there with a movie (regardless of how shitty or uninspired the plot might be) or TV show or stand-up comedy special was something most of us were guilty of.

In some ways, Mr. Williams was the toy that we forgot we had: the one that slowly creeps to the back of the bedroom closet until, one day, your parents come along and toss it in the trash because they never see you play with it – and the very next day, you remember you had that toy and go to play with it… only to feel the guilt and sorrow that comes from the realization of all the fun possibilities that you’ll never get to make good on.

Robin had surely felt the lack of love on our part since we had lost interest in the trademark zaniness that had been pasteurized and shaped into a formula by studio focus group testing – which is both our own fault for not embracing edgier material, as well as not holding studios to a higher standard with our hard-earned dollars.

As with all suicides, both of the celebrity kind and that of regular everyday people whom you know personally, we don’t realize how much someone means to us until they’ve gone – leaving us all to gaze inwards at ourselves and wonder why we didn’t do more to make that person understand that they had people who loved them dearly.

The prevailing wisdom on the topic of suicide is that it’s “a permanent solution to a temporary problem”, but those who are in the dank pit of depression completely lack the perspective to make that kind of differentiation – which means that all of us have a moral obligation to make sure that we help them find the path back out into the light… and it’s something that we’re woefully inept at since most of us are all too caught up in our own little lives to be bothered with helping a fellow soul out in their time of need.

If Mr. Williams had been able to witness the outpouring of love and admiration that came after his death today (well, yesterday since it’s now after midnight as I write this), I’m absolutely certain that he would have been able to get through the darkness that was consuming his troubled soul.

While unnatural celebrity deaths are one of the unavoidable truths of Hollywood, they fall into a few different categories.

The first is accidental: where a celebrity meets their end due to forces mostly beyond their control – like when Paul Walker met his end in a car wreck… and while these events are sad, they fall in line with the rules of the universe.

The second is accidental drug overdose: where the party-hard lifestyle of Hollywood’s A-list crowd collides with the vicious downside of the illicit drug trade – but that downside is always a possibility since there are no strict quality standards for illegal substances, nor are you always going to be able to use appropriate judgement of how much drugs you can safely take while you’reunder the influenceof drugs… which is a lesson we learn from the death of someone like Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

And then we have the third, the celebrity suicide: the last, pathetic cries of a usually washed-up actor or actress who has pissed away their fortune and alienated the Hollywood establishment by either generally making an ass of themselves in public forums or signing on to any piece of drivel that comes along in order to make some quick cash so they can fuel their own self-destructive tendencies with shit tons of alcohol or street drugs.

Having reached rock bottom, these former celebrities stick a shotgun in their mouths at a seedy motel and pull the trigger, which generates a few headlines due to our collective morbid curiosity about such things.

But I don’t think Robin Williams was anywhere near has-been status, nor could he have been conceivably poor since he surely still makes plenty of coin through royalties on past hits – as well as having been recently the star of a network television series, regardless of how well it was or wasn’t received by critics and audiences alike.

In many of today’s articles written after his death, it was revealed that Robin had been fighting substance addiction… which I suppose would be almost unavoidable given his manic personality, but it also underlines one of the facts that we at home overlook: actors, actresses, music artists, and sports celebrities are still human beings – and if any of us mere mortals were to endure the kinds of pressure these people do in their highly performance-oriented lives, many of us would crumple under the weight of endless demands.

I say that last part not to excuse the alcoholism or pill dependency that many celebrities develop, but to simply understand that each and every human being needs some downtime where they are free from worry or stress.

In the end, I truly feel for Mr. Williams’ family who have been left with both a gaping hole where their loved one used to be and a three-ring media circus that will spend the foreseeable future scrutinizing Robin’s life in the months leading up to his suicide in the supposed search for answers, but mostly just to sensationalize the final few sad and lonely moments of an apparently broken man.

Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.

No. That’s not fair.

Nobody died today (well, to be honest, averages say that 123,000 people have died today so far all around the globe) – nobody of any global importance anyhow.

However, today was the moment that a lot of us hopefuls realized that for all the good Barack Obama means to do in the world, he’s only going to accomplish maybe 40% (and that’s being generous).

Why is that?

It’s because the politicians on the other side of the aisle from his party – namely, the Republicans – will find a thousand different ways to tear the president down in the eyes of the general voting public.

For every honest and forthright statement that Obama puts forward, some Republican pundit in the back offices of Congress sends out a fax to all the other Republicans on how to disqualify what he said.

Today’s broo-ha-ha over Obama’s back to school speech aimed at STUDENTS is the most stunning example of this.

The U.S. president is aware enough of today’s youth culture to realize that students are okay with being stupid – and decided (rightfully) that this was not acceptable in any way, shape, or form.

How can anyone fault the guy for doing something most of us over 25 would love to say today’s idiot youth?

Today’s kids are encouraged by peers – and by popular media to an extent – to be absolutely dumb-as-rocks and asinine to the point where it borders on lunacy.

How is this trend even remotely acceptable?

My fellow Canadians and I could only dream of someone of national import – someone with social clout – to take the time and branch out to the disenfranchised young people of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and other places and give them a talking to.

Someone who could pull on the collective ear of today’s public school attending young people and tell them to stop being little douche bags.

Alas… we don’t have ANYONE like that. Our prime minister is far too busy collecting knit sweaters and handing out tax breaks for the ultra-rich.

However, I’m focusing on our American neighbours today.

The Republicans have packaged their partisan politics in an easily digested package that appeals mainly to the people most likely to be the most vociferous in the media – John & Sally Six-Pack.

John and Sally are the people who most resonate with the Republican party – mostly because they are uneducated (or barely educated) rednecks who just love to see their own faces and hear their own voices on the six o’clock news – which works out extremely well for the Republican party because the incapacity for independent and rational thought makes John & Sally VERY programmable.

All the Republicans have to do is wind them up and point them in the general direction of the nearest television camera broadcasting from the field.

What else are they going to say since they can’t come up with ten intelligent words strung together? They have no choice except to say exactly what they heard from any random Republican talking head on Fox news, or heard on the radio from Rush Limbaugh.

This strategy has been used to great effect during the American health debates that are happening all over the U.S.

In this instance, however, they’ve narrowed down the subject quite a bit.

“They don’t need to be told by the president what their responsibilities are. It’s the parents’ responsibility to teach them that, not the government.”

That was the comment from an actual redneck parent (whom flunked high school and now cleans carpets) who had pulled their children on the first day of school so as not to be exposed to the evil Democrat’s clearly-socialist indoctrination attempt.

I suppose that would be a perfectly acceptable statement to make if that parent – or 60% of parents in North America – had any intention to teach their kids ANYTHING! And I do mean ANYTHING.

By and large, today’s parents can not be bothered to deal with their children in any meaningful way – whether it be hanging out with them and throwing a ball around, or taking an interest in their school studies (other than to yell “Do your homework!” up the stairs to the second floor where the kids will dutifully ignore them). Hell, sit down with your kids and play video games… because you will at least gain SOME insight into that portion of their lives.

I’m not sure who’s fault this is, really. I can only say it’s a confluence of trends that started in the 60’s and went into the 80’s – from the women’s liberation movement demanding women have equal jobs in the workplace, to the consumer society that arose from the yuppy culture which required all adults to have 9-to-5 jobs so they could keep up with the material wealth of their neighbors.

Today, parents don’t have the time to do any actual parenting – and those who do can’t be bothered.

Don’t mistake me. There are some really exceptional parents out there who are absolutely stellar at parenting – but they are just that: exceptional. They are the exception to the general status quo.

So where else are today’s kids supposed to get any sort of positive influence?

Celebrities?

If you said ‘yes’, then I must really stop and say: are you freakin’ kidding me?

Girls aspire to be Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, or Kristen Stewart – who may have a collective I.Q. of 110 all together.

Boys aspire to be 50 Cent, Eminem, or Dane Cook – and really, do any of them really rate kids looking up to them?

So, yes… I’m all for President Barack Obama – arguably the most powerful man on the planet – having a candid sit down with today’s youth and telling them to smarten the hell up.

I applaud him telling kids to stop being little dumbasses and to aspire to being something greater.

I know that somewhere out there, in today’s public school system – whether it be in Canada, America, Britain, or some other place on this planet – is a kid who’s going to make a very important discovery that will alter the direction of the human species in a positive way.

I can only hope that Obama’s speech today – or some other well-meaning talk given by someone else of gravitas to that one special kid – will fall on their ears and make them want to be that someone and reach out for their destiny.